Chapter 182 The Lohenheim Liaison Officer

Brendan came back early that evening, because Simon Salt was the only one of them he'd found.

Simon Salt received him with the warmest welcome, led him up to the second deck of the pleasure boat, and — no wine — had a carnation-and-rosehip wine brewed for the two of them to drink and talk over:

"Brendan — what's the pressing business with my eldest?"

"I only want to know: has he spoken to Lord Regent Legard for me or hasn't he? Father's about to haul me back into the barracks — and once that's done, even if the Lord Regent himself asked him for the man, he'd never say yes."

Brendan's face was all gloom; he lifted the tisane cup and took a great pull of it, and tasted nothing at all.

Simon Salt laughed: "And here I thought it was something. Set your mind at ease on this — I hear it's already in train. Only the gap from your present grade is a bit of a stretch — we'll need Grand Master Voss of the Northern Office."

Voss? Brendan's heart gave an uneasy jump:

Father had always looked down on chamberlains, and would not be seen walking with one. If he came to know his son had leaned on Voss to get out of the barracks and up another ladder — wouldn't he skin him alive?

And then — would Voss ever work for nothing? Brendan himself was drawing on next year's purse to pay this year's debts as it was. Where would he find the silver to bribe the man?

Simon Salt poured him up another cup and comforted him:

"What you're fretting over — my eldest has thought it all through. At the King's Birth-Feast the King gives audience to the envoys of the tributary realms and to the marcher domains' liaison officers; where there's a liaison officer to be replaced that year, the appointments fall then too. And if it's the King's own hand that appoints you — what can the General do to you?"

"The King? A liaison officer?" Brendan gave a dry laugh:

"You're having me on, Lord Salt. The liaison post is a civil one. I've not what my third brother has — his honors out of the university. And Lohenheim isn't the northern marches, where the marcher duke slots his own men in. Not to say I'm not yet twenty. How would I reach so high?"

Born and bred in an official's house, he had that much self-knowledge at least.

"Don't say the word 'never.' We're the same age, you and I — cross over New Year and by the old count you're twenty. And the Grand Master is a man whose hands and eyes reach to heaven itself. Look at Joss Wray, deputy marcher duke of Zarren — base-born, ill-favored of face, and hitched to the Grand Master's star he stands swelled with power to the very skies."

Simon Salt patted the back of the hand Brendan had laid on the table, and laughed:

"Look at it — a hand that fine-bred. What business has it with sword or saber?"

It was a thing Brendan had heard more than once back in Augustburg, from all those young lords who were not eldest sons and would come into no title:

The title will never come to you. The estate — you'll get your sliver of it. If a man doesn't enjoy himself while the sun shines, what was the point of being born to the purple at all?

"Only — I can't lay hands on much silver just now. It wouldn't be right, your eldest putting out his labor and his money both..." Brendan's heart had gone over already.

The Lohenheim liaison officer was not, in truth, a post of the weight other domains' officers carried. The two capitals stood close and well informed of each other, and the officer's gathering of intelligence, his passing up and down of word, came to little; the grade of it was only the sixth.

But that low-grade official held one thing besides: the right to appear before the King in person.

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The King was his own cousin on the mother's side, and his third brother stood in the War Office. Be seen often enough, grow a familiar face — and who was to say the King might not one day lay some charge of consequence on him?

It came down to money, that was all. That much of the world's ways Brendan understood...

Then Simon Salt said, all at once: "Brendan — I take you for a friend in earnest. There's a thing... don't go hiding it from me."

"What talk is that? Ask away — what I know, you'll have to the last word." The fourth brother's heart gave a hitch: surely he wasn't coming round to the book of secrets again?

Happily that was not the thing Simon Salt raised. He said, in earnest:

"Of late the Eastern Capital's seen a run of new contrivances. There's a washing-set, now — it has all Lohenheim by the ears, and the supply can't come near the demand; only the Black Eagles' doll shop carries it.

I'll not hide it — I've bought a fair stock myself. But short of the formulas, there's no making the rest of it, toothbrush aside... I've marked that those Black Eagles walk close with your house. Do you know where their formulas for the toothpaste, the soap, and the paper come from?"

Brendan laughed, a load off his back:

"That's no Black Eagle's thinking. That's my sister, tinkering it up at our house, and setting it in their shop to sell."

"Truly? This too came out of the young lady's own head?" Simon Salt put on a great show of astonishment, and the extravagance of it tickled Brendan's pride:

"I'll tell you the truth of it. Since my sister went off your boat into the water that day, she's been another creature. Before — she loved to be coaxed, and would put on little tempers; cute enough, to be sure. Still cute now. Only she's gone from being my little sister to being my big sister."

Simon Salt went off into a great laugh:

"Where's the exaggeration in that? The girl I see grows prettier by the day, and sharp as a whetstone into the bargain... If your father didn't hold his grudge against us merchants, I'd be at your door with a marriage offer!"

They talked themselves warm, and Brendan let it all out:

"And don't look at fat Hugo playing host day in, day out at the iron-plate house — that's a joint venture of his and my sister's. The iron-plate cooking itself, all her notion. If I'd had the capital, where would he have come in?"

The iron-plate trade was easy enough to copy. The hard part was the house's "secret seasonings."

The Salt brothers had put it to fat Hugo more than once, and all he ever gave them was a chuckle and a shrug.

In fact, had Brendan said nothing, they had already had it sounded out on the quiet: the workshop that made the paper and the rest stood on Odenheim East Manor.

That "Tobias" spirit — they had taken it for a secret run out of the Royal Brewery, and were just then working to bring Tobias under the Salt banner, when they found his distillery too stood on East Manor.

And before ever the Odenheims had made a great push of it, those few formulas were already earning them fortunes — with none but that fool Brendan none the wiser.

Today's fishing for his words was no more than confirmation.

If it stood so, then the young lady was the greatest treasure House Odenheim had.

"Then we'll put this on your shoulders, Brendan. Go back and put in a good word for us — the Salt house is willing to pay a high price for the formulas your sister holds."

Simon Salt saw Brendan all the way down off the boat.

Brendan smiled: "The one at home that spoils me worst is my sister. The pity is, this Lohenheim Liaison Office business can't come to her ears yet — I'll have to find my moment to tell her."

"To be sure, to be sure. The young lady has a mind of her own, from what I see — you'll want to keep coaxing her, Brendan."

"Who in the family doesn't coax her?"

"Ha-ha-ha — a lucky thing I have no sister."

When Brendan's figure had passed out of sight, Harlan Charnley, deputy marcher duke of Eastmarch, came out at Simon Salt's back together with Cedric Salt. Charnley gave a disdainful sniff:

"Stephen — never lets a year pass without remembering he's sprung from the great founding general. Self-crowned, sour-faced, oh-so-proper — and see what he's grown, one rotten melon of a son. Still — you're the first royal merchants in the realm already. Why trouble over a young girl's penny-ante doings?"

"A thing or two is no wonder, and none of it past copying either. But when one pocket keeps handing out thing after thing, folk can't help wanting a look inside that pocket."

Cedric Salt himself had hurried back from Xiaford for this meeting with Charnley.

The errand had gone badly all round. He had run through three shires of the southern hill wine country, and the finest vine-hills of them all would have none of his partnership.

He had not so much as laid eyes on the owners of the hills.

Winter was near at hand now, and by Joss Wray's reckoning, at the quickest the wine monopoly would spread over the whole Empire with next spring's picking.

If the southern hill country, nearest of all to Lohenheim, could not be had, then it must be the Southmarch and the Eastreach provinces.

And that side of the world the Salt house could not swallow whole. To lose the southern hills was to lose his one great advantage.

"Simon — can Tobias's drink be got clear of the Odenheims?"

Simon Salt shook his head: "Too late for that. The King has already entered the Odenheims' 'East-Capital Brew' on the register of royal wines. How would they ever let the man go?"

Charnley shrugged it off:

"A wine-man, no more. If he alone knows the recipe — carry him off and have done!"

True enough. The King's Birth-Feast was coming on; it could not be that every last thing would go crosswise.